International Relations, Security, Intelligence, Globalization…

Brandon Scott 2020 (Policy Positions)

Keep US Embassy in Jerusalem. Recognize Palestine. Both sides will be confused about their feelings. Take Iranian money still frozen, and use it for humanitarian aid for Palestinians.

If Iranian money cannot be had, take money frozen from Venezuela as they are allies of Iran and provide a satellite platform for Iranian operations in the American region.

Veterans Administration

Fire everyone in the VA who is not a veteran.

Re-staff it with all Veterans. Now they have jobs and the VA has a vested in interest in the work they do. No more backlogs. No more dying vets.

Afghanistan

Fix the International Zone. Wall it off like Baghdad.

Negotiate with Taliban for 10k US troop withdrawal (leave behind a contingent of JSOC/CT operators, Essential Function Advisors and ISR) – while ramping targeted strikes on leaders. Create massive education program for youth in provinces.

Tell Pakistan to build a border “wall” if they want our military aid. Establish the Prince Plan for Security Assistance and Essential Functions not covered and pressure India and China (who benefit the most from the natural resource contracts in Afghanistan) to provide Security Force Assistance and advisory.

Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Sunni extremism so Saudi Arabia pays for the massive youth education program and a jobs program for domestic development projects. Development projects in the past usually failed because USAID could not conduct proper monitoring and evaluation. This led to corruption and USAID funds going directly into militias’ pockets for bribery and protection money. NATO should not be running Afghanistan. The UN on lead with India and China as the manpower should be.

Force GIRoA to manage all government finances digitally. There is 4G in Afghanistan and digital financial accountability is the only way to counter the massive corruption that one could argue is the primary challenge for Afghanistan. Create a corruption reporting mobile app. Both services are to be created by Afghans and paid for with an inflated award prize to the teams who won and participated.

Ensure 100% internet penetration rate in Afghanistan by 2022. I personally drafted the most comprehensive paper on this topic. Task Roshan or the Moby Group to run this effort. They work has been great so far.

Syria

Option 1: Remove Assad, forcibly. Have the Arab League drop 250k troops, for 5 years, for stabilization. GCC/Arab League/KSA fund the entire operation. Lock down the border between Syria and Iraq.

Option 2: Balkanize Syria. Syria may be the greatest example of a needed Balkanization (more so than Iraq). Split between Turkey, Kurds and a third element (UN, Lebanon, or Iraq). Lock down the border between Syria and Iraq. Still remove Assad

Yemen

Green-light the GCC/Arab League to remove the Houthis on humanitarian grounds, with overwhelming force. We already have US ISR infrastructure in place. Follow up with Arab troops under UN -guise, utilize Arab states via the WFP and UN to immediately follow in behind them for aid.

US/EU or China/India given rights to develop a massive port on the coast of Yemen to be completed within 5 years – to turn Yemen into a maritime hub for trade through the Indian Ocean.

UAE creates a high speed rail line from Sanaa to Dubai to import labor from Yemen. UAE owes it to Yemen to hire them instead of Bengalis, Indians and Pakistanis as their labor force for domestic development. The UAE cash-house now has money funneled back to Yemen.

Yemen is suspected of having vast natural resources untapped, explore this as a funding mechanism.

Oman provides extensive security force assistance.

Create global exchange program for Yemeni education, contingent on the student returning to Yemen. Student also signs a waiver to the right of seeking asylum while studying abroad.

Economy

Establish living wage based off of number of dependents. Apply time cap on this for 10 years. This gives an income boost to those who made bad decisions already (having kids they cannot afford) while pressuring no further people from doing so thinking kids = money. Review at 10 year mark.

Public info campaign to stop having kids if you cannot afford them.

Crime/PrisonReform

Ban death penalty – turn the Innocence Project into a government Task Force with a mission to confirm every inmate imprisoned between 1980 and 1995 – as it targeted Black African Americans.

Offer gun buyback program in inner cities. If you bring in a gun – you get a 6 months of healthy food, free fuel and free internet. This encourages inner-city current and potential criminals to study well, find jobs and get to work easily.

Include law that no minors can have information/images posted publicly, thereby providing them the ability upon becoming an adult, to decide their level of anonymity.

The threat of ransomware, blackmail and hacking is greater than the threat of terrorism – push for encryption in all commercial digital products/services. All State, Local and Federal governments must use fully encrypted digital services by 2022.

Gender

Transparency of gender pay by organization – every organization to be required to submit anonymous data on the gender, position title and salary, in order to provide a transparent review of a gender pay gap.

Gender Neutral military standards.

Women must sign up for the draft.

Fraternities and Sororities do not fall under Title 9?. You want safe space – these are safe spaces.

IRS

Flat tax percentage.

Complete overhaul of IRS. Possible tar and feather in the public square of most of the employees.

Turn agency into a digital agency. It is still snail mail based and draconian.

Homeland Security

Mandatory college & study abroad requirements for TSA positions.

Create list of previously vetted travelers, such as USG background checked – they get express screening.

Create a Joint Vetting Center that is tasked with vetting all immigrants, Local Employees at USG bases and embassies abroad, and security clearance required USPER. A joint venture will reduce redundancies and streamline processes.

Hire all the illegals to build the wall – they are given 10 year Green Cards. Buy materials from the home towns where southern immigrants are coming from. Better yet, make it a trench, then we don’t need materials, just shovels. Even better, make it a canal so we don’t have to use the Panama Canal. We built it for them, now they can build one for us. Boom. Problem Solved. Problem staying solved.

Actually track international departures. Currently only arrivals are tracked.

Education

Serve 2 years in the Military/Peace Corps/AmeriCorps, get a free 4 year degree paid for at any university you get accepted to.

Begin the process for a Joint Force to replace redundancy of branches. Start with joint Service Uniforms and Joint Rank structure. Joint Force established by 2030.

If you serve 5+ years, you get a house.

DOD/DOS

Create America’s Expeditionary Corps (in effect, a combination of PRTs, ODAs and SFATs; a highly educated, highly seasoned cadre who specialist in Security Force Assistance, Development and mentoring, that is embedded in in countries under with no GO1 and single occupancy housing. Pay them exceptionally well, and ensure they stay overseas for a minimum of 2-5 year tours.

These cadre are to language/culture trained. They go to the “non-integrating gap” and other post-conflict zones. There specialty is pre-conflict zones. They work closely with the Information Force to prevent conflicts in ungoverned regions.

Ramp up diplomatic engagements with Algeria. Algeria is the next North African “non-integrating gap” nation that will fall when the leader usurps the next election and Arab Spring Protests occur.

The Arab Spring taught us that despite long held beliefs, a strong dictator is not stability. It is the opposite. Like a non-Earthquake resistant building along a fault line. Flexibility and democracy is stability. Without it you get Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Libya.

Libya

NATO/EU/Mediterranean states take lead. Egypt and Tunisia tasked with massive export of security to Libya.

Intelligence

Clearances are vetted and adjudicated by the Joint Vetting Center.

A complete overhaul of the Cold War era “Foreign Fear” paradigm. No longer is knowing foreigners or foreign travel a bad thing. In fact, it is now encouraged.

Work with tech industry to establish a 2FA approved mechanism for Secret and Top Secret space. Currently, if you work in a secure office having a 2FA personal account (Gmail for example) is nearly impossible. This is counterintuitive as our cleared staff thus have weaker security on their personal accounts – these are people who should not have the weakest security on their personal accounts. You hack a spooks personal Gmail, bad things can happen.

Remove all reporting of mental counseling that is not court ordered.

Remove all drug reporting aside from hospitalizations.

Store all SF-86 data at the Secret level to avoid another OPM hack.

Overhaul of Classified networks to ensure they operate at the same speed of unclassified networks – at any cost. This causes massive delays in intelligence processing.

Merge agencies individual FOUO/SBU/Classified systems.

Joint Unified Classification matrix. DOD has FOUO, DOS has SBU. LEOs have LES. This is dumb and confusing and causes problems.

HealthCare

Nationalized Health Care so everyone is covered.

Each person pays based on their health – the healthier you are, the less you pay. Haven’t left the couch in 3 months? You pay a lot more.

Extreme Tax credits if you are in (or retired from) an industry that has Physical Training Requirements (LEO, MIL)

Private healthcare is subsidized/discounted.

This makes sense because the longer you live and the healthier you live, the more money you bring to the economy.

Infrastructure

Coast to Coast High Speed train. Non-negotiable. Within 5 years.

USG official mobile app to report public infrastructure decay. This prioritizes tasks for fixing to a central hub that delegates.

Cuba

Complete engagement. Return the embassy to full staff.

Absorb Cuba with love and incorporation. Pour money and connectivity into it while pushing extensively for democratization. Isolation is not the future for Cuba inclusivity.

Dialogue

Create a National Dialogue Conference that brings the nation together for an actual deep-depth conversation on the most controversial and delicate issues. No soundbites, not tropes. Deep work. Our culture is being torn apart over topical analysis.

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